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Denver Public Schools is taking the Trump administration to court in an effort to keep immigration enforcement away from schools locally and across the country.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Denver Public Schools asked the court to void a Trump administration policy that clears the way for immigration enforcement to take place at “sensitive locations.”
The Denver school district’s move comes as immigration enforcement intensifies across the country, including high-profile raids last week of apartment complexes in Denver and Aurora.
“DPS is hindered in fulfilling its mission of providing education and life services to the students who are refraining from attending DPS schools for fear of immigration enforcement actions occurring on DPS school grounds,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit argues that the school district has been “forced to divert resources from its educational mission to prepare for immigration arrests on DPS school grounds.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
In an interview, Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero described terrified students and parents who see their schools as safe places — and anguished teachers who worry that the Trump administration’s actions could mean that’s no longer true.
“We can’t continue to function with this fear,” Marrero said. He said that immigration enforcement is going to happen, but “the fact that some folks feel that it’s going to happen in our schools is just going to really cripple the way we function.”
Denver is believed to be the first school district in the country to mount a legal challenge against the Trump administration’s abolishment of a decades-old federal policy that treated schools, child care centers, churches, and hospitals as sensitive or protected locations where immigration enforcement should only take place if there is immediate danger to the public.
An outside law firm is representing the district at no cost, district leaders said.
Denver Public Schools also filed a motion Wednesday seeking a temporary restraining order that would reinstate the sensitive locations policy.
“It is in the public interest for schools not to become hunting grounds for suspected undocumented immigrants,” that motion says.
District leaders acknowledged the legal filings could cause the federal government to target or retaliate against Denver Public Schools, which is already the subject of a federal civil rights probe of an all-gender school restroom. But they said it’s a risk worth taking.
“Scared children can’t learn,” Denver school board President Carrie Olson said.
Impacts of ICE raids felt in Denver schools, superintendent says
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents did not go to any Denver or Aurora schools last week, nor have there been any reports of ICE agents detaining anyone at or near schools across the country since Trump took office.
But other impacts have been felt. In Denver, five school buses were rerouted last Wednesday because of ICE activity at an apartment complex, a district spokesperson said. A teacher at a school near the complex said some students were absent because ICE blocked the buses from picking them up. Other students were picked up by their parents midday, the teacher said.
“A lot of kids, we haven’t seen,” teacher Matt Meyer said shortly after the raids. “What I’m worried about is it doesn’t help anyone to have kids not at school.”
Four students from one school and their families were detained in the community during the raids, Marrero said. Given one phone call, Marrero said the parents called the school to tell them.
At another school, Marrero said he spoke with a mother whose husband was handcuffed by ICE agents in the early hours of the morning on his way to work. Though the mother was able to produce documentation that led ICE agents to let him go, she was shaken.
The mother “walked in [to the school] just terrified and crying,” Marrero said.
Students were terrified too, Marrero said. When he went into classrooms wearing a suit and tie, he said he overheard some students ask in Spanish, “‘Is he one of them?’ The way I’m dressed is enough to scare them.”
When ICE agents showed up at a nearby apartment complex, Marrero said one student told the school leader that their mother had said, “Run! Run to the school!” The student showed up at the school huffing and out of breath, Marrero said.
“Mom sent the kids to the safe haven, which was the school,” Marrero said. “But right now, we don’t even know if that’s true.”
Religious groups across the country have already filed at least two lawsuits challenging the rescinding of the sensitive locations policy as it relates to churches. In response to one of the lawsuits, attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security called the religious groups’ fears that their churches would be the target of immigration enforcement “hypothetical.”
Marrero said the effects on Denver students, families, and staff are not hypothetical, even if ICE agents haven’t shown up at schools. He said it would be “foolish and negligent for us to wait for someone to come into our buildings to drag a kid out.”
“It’s absolutely absurd that we have to wait for something to happen when we should be taking measures to prevent it,” Marrero said.
Lawsuit says Trump policy causes ‘variety of costs and harms’
Denver Public Schools serves about 90,000 students, about 52% of whom are Latino. Starting in late 2022, the city of Denver saw an influx of migrants from Venezuela and other countries, and the school district ended last school year with about 4,000 new immigrant students enrolled. About 80% of those students were still enrolled this fall, according to district data.
The lawsuit argues that rescinding the sensitive locations policy has caused a “wide variety of costs and harms” to Denver Public Schools staff, students, and families, including “by chilling school attendance.” It says “attendance has decreased noticeably,” particularly in schools that serve new immigrant students and schools in areas where immigration raids have occurred.
Overall attendance in Denver’s public schools has been slightly lower since Trump took office on Jan. 20. Last school year, average attendance was 88%, according to the district.
Attendance on Jan. 30, the day it was rumored the raids would start, was 84.5%, according to district data. On Feb. 5, the day the raids took place, districtwide attendance was 86.9%.
But attendance at some schools in neighborhoods affected by the raids was as low as 66% that day, according to district data. In the days that followed, some classrooms that normally have 35 students or more were reduced to as few as seven students, the legal filings say.
In addition, attendance dipped when hundreds of Denver high school students left school on the day of the raids to join a downtown protest against Trump’s immigration policies.
Denver school board Vice President Marlene De La Rosa visited schools on the day of the ICE raids and said she heard of one student who hadn’t been in class for two weeks for fear of immigration enforcement. Other students were worried about their friends, she said.
“Secondhand trauma, it’s very real and it’s very impactful,” she said.
The lawsuit says the district has spent “significant time and resources” putting in place policies and training staff to respond to potential immigration enforcement on campus. The district has had to respond to false reports of ICE activity at schools and organize community outreach programs to ensure students and families feel safe coming to school, the lawsuit says.
Denver Public Schools, like several other districts in Colorado and nationwide, has issued guidance to staff and families on what to do if ICE agents show up on campus. Denver’s guidance says school staff should at first deny the agents entry and place the school on a secure perimeter, which means no one is allowed in or out.
School staff should ask the agents for their identification and whether they have a warrant or court order, the guidance says, and then call the school district’s lawyers. Federal agents would only be allowed inside if they had a proper warrant or court order, the guidance says.
“Although staff are expected to operate in accordance with these policies, staff will not physically impede, interfere with or obstruct a government official in performing their duties," said a Jan. 24 letter from Marrero to district staff.
Denver Public Schools has been advising families to update their children’s emergency contact information in the district’s data portal to include someone who is not a parent or guardian and who could pick a child up from school and care for them if a parent is detained.
The administration of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has said the city is working on a plan to take custody of any children whose parents are detained or deported and placing the children with relatives or in foster care. Johnston had pledged to sue the Trump administration if it instructed ICE to detain Denver residents at schools or other sensitive locations.
Lawsuit also points to a lack of transparency
Other arguments in the school district’s lawsuit are more technical.
Denver Public Schools argues that a pair of January memos from Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman and Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello have not been published or publicly released. The district says that lack of transparency makes the rescinding of the sensitive locations policy “a final agency action that occurred entirely behind closed doors.”
The school district also objects to the reasoning that the Department of Homeland Security gave in a press release that rescinding the sensitive locations policy allows ICE to catch “criminal aliens — including murders and rapists — who have illegally come into our country” and that “[c]riminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools or churches to avoid arrest.”
“The January 21 Press Release offers no factual support, analysis, or evidence for its assertion that there are ‘murders [sic] and rapists’ ‘hid[ing] in America’s schools,’” the lawsuit says.
Huffman’s memo instructs ICE agents to use discretion “and a healthy dose of common sense.” The memo says it’s not necessary “for the agency to create bright line rules regarding where our immigration laws are permitted to be enforced.”
But the lawsuit argues that the previous federal policy, versions of which date back to 1993, already allowed for immigration arrests at schools or other sensitive locations “under such exigent circumstances as a rapist or murderer hiding on school grounds.”
The lawsuit asks the court to void the Trump administration’s policy and block the government from enforcing it “on both a preliminary and permanent basis,” which would restore the previous guidelines. It also asks the court to make the Trump policy “available for public inspection.”
Some say having the previous guidelines in place is crucial because it creates consistency for how immigration law should be enforced in places where people seek essential services.
“You could have just wildly disparate enforcement practices in one location and another based upon what a particular field office might think, or even more so, based upon what a particular team in the field or an individual officer might think,” said Tom Jawetz, a senior fellow for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress who served in the Department of Homeland Security under President Biden.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
